In industrial processing of meat products, such as chicken, beef, pork and fish, a common problem is to separate pieces of product by weight or dimensions. There are many approaches to separating pieces, including purely mechanical approaches such as roller graders, and electro-mechanical methods such as weigh scale graders, and vision system based systems. Different approaches are useful in solving problems presented by different types and sizes of products. For instance, weigh grading with a weigh belt grader is very common for sandwich sized chicken portions or whole chicken breasts.
However, as the size of the portions decrease while the production rate increases, a problem in sorting occurs when small pieces need to be sorted at a very fast rate. The sorting of raw chicken nuggets is one such problem that still needs to be overcome.